this way you can have the cables between the switches funnel into the cable management then neatly use vertical management to bring them to the patch panels
I'd use the cable management that's in between the 2ns sw and the top pp to maintain a clean patterns and possibly for cables going to servers
But I personally would put PPs or route cables below the switches. Switches tend to have link and activity lights at the top, so if your cables route towards the top of the switch then they could obscure your view of the blinky lights.
As for whether you bunch the PPs together in a block or interleave the switches with them, you need to consider how the cables are going to be brought in to the patch rack in the first place, and how easy it will be to work on the back of the PPs for maintenance. If you interleave your switches then it wont be easy to access the back of a PP without pulling it out from the front. If you put your switches elsewhere then it might be possible to access the back of them quite easily.
Most installations I have seen the PPs tend to be bunched together with cable management interleaved. The switches then sit below, or in another rack depending on how many ports are terminated.
When you terminate your cables on to PPs you don't terminate them according to the switch you want to plug them in to, but rather in some kind of order like desk or room number. You then run patches from each PP port to the desired switch and port as necessary.
The important thing is to manage the cables properly as you are installing them to avoid your patch rack looking like an old telephone patching board.
So you might use a layout like the following:
PP CM PP CM (free space) SW CM SW CM
Fill your PPs from top down, and switches from bottom up. Or vice versa, which ever best suits your environment.
For example, you might choose to put your PPs at the bottom and switches at the top if the environment is particularly dirty and you want to prevent as much grit getting in to the switches as possible. Or maybe you put the switches at the bottom because its cooler.
Given your rack is only 9RU, if its mounted up on a wall then perhaps you put the patch panels at the bottom since its easier to reach to move patches to new ports without needing a ladder.
You just need to survey your environment and determine what factors will be most important.
Splitting the cables in the centre and going either side is good, and it will look good as well.
Ideally you'd have some kind of cable management on the side as well, but you cant have everything.
Im still not a fan of 1 patch panel per switch, especially since you say you only want certain ports on one switch, you're going to end up terminating your sockets to suit the switches, rather than a logical order on the patch panels.
The only time I'd agree with dedicating a patch panel to a switch is when you don't have specific requirements as to which devices go on which switch, because in that situation it doesn't matter. But when you have a specific requirement like that, I think its better to terminate logically on the patch panels, and patch as required from each switch to the required patch panel ports. Use a different coloured patch lead to differentiate the two if an absolute must.
